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Technical Bard
Technical Bard

Reputation: 4485

HTML / CSS autonumber headings?

Is there a way (ideally easy) to make headings and sections autonumber in HTML/CSS? Perhaps a JS library?

Or is this something that is hard to do in HTML?

I'm looking at an application for a corporate wiki but we want to be able to use heading numbers like we always have in word processors.

Upvotes: 18

Views: 13736

Answers (7)

Stephen
Stephen

Reputation: 19944

Definitely possible using css counters - just make sure you watch out for browser compatibility...:

This will make h2 get 1., 2., h3 gets 1.1, 2.1, 2.2 etc...

<style>
   body{counter-reset: section}
   h2{counter-reset: sub-section}
   h3{counter-reset: composite}
   h4{counter-reset: detail}

   h2:before{
     counter-increment: section;
     content: counter(section) " ";
   }
   h3:before{
     counter-increment: sub-section;
     content: counter(section) "." counter(sub-section) " ";
   }
   h4:before{
     counter-increment: composite;
     content: counter(section) "." counter(sub-section) "." counter(composite) " ";
   }
   h5:before{
     counter-increment: detail;
     content: counter(section) "." counter(sub-section) "." counter(composite) "." counter(detail) " ";
   }
   </style>

As lpfavreau says, it's the same as another question I believe.

Also note that using css will not change the heading (e.g. selected text will give you the heading without the numbers). This may or may not be desirable. lpfavreau's (accepted) answer will give you the jquery code to modify the heading text.

See MDN: Using CSS counters for details.

3rd Party Edit

I created an example with the css above

Upvotes: 44

lpfavreau
lpfavreau

Reputation: 13211

2016 update. Please see Stephen's answer below for a proper method in CSS. My answer made sense in 2009 when the browsers and libraries were different. We are now living in a whole new world and the method presented here is outdated. I'm leaving it for the poor souls that are still living in corporate microcosms made of IE7 and tears.

See this other question if you're wondering how to do it in CSS, the answer might be what you are looking for. But titel has a good proposition too, depending how your HTML document is made.

It should be noted that, as Triptych said in another comment, this is of interest only if it's for an internal tool where you have control over which browsers are used and using CSS is worth it because modifying the HTML would be hard for example. Support of this CSS feature is limited.

It would of course be easy to use something like jQuery to do the increment also. Something like this untested snippet:

$(document).ready(function() {
  $('h1').each(function(index) {
    $(this).html((index + 1) + '. ' + $(this).html());
  });
});

Don't forget to include the jquery.js file in your document of course.

Upvotes: 3

titel
titel

Reputation: 3502

It is possible to implement auto numbering using HTML itself using ordered lists, and nesting them if necessary. Below there is a link to a live example of this, example I found after a fast search on Google.

http://archive.corewebprogramming.com/Chapter2/Nested-Ordered-Lists.html

There is also an possibility to use Unordered Lists and CSS as shown in this example:

http://print.wordpress.com/2006/02/22/css-beautifully-numbered-lists/

Upvotes: 0

Luis Melgratti
Luis Melgratti

Reputation: 12050

The simplest method would be Numbered Lists

<ol>
<li> Section
    <ol>
      <li>Nested one</li>
      <li>Nested two</li>
    </ol>
</li>
<li>Section</li>
<li>Section</li>
<li>Section</li>
<ol>

will be something like:

  1. Section
    I. Nested one
    II. Nested two
  2. Section
  3. Section
  4. Section

Upvotes: 1

Satish
Satish

Reputation: 79

<ol>
  <li>Heading 1</li>
  <li>Heading 2</li>
  <li>Heading 3</li>
</ol>

Upvotes: -1

sebnow
sebnow

Reputation: 1380

Lists do it, why not other elements? http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/generate.html#scope

Upvotes: 0

Arve Systad
Arve Systad

Reputation: 5479

Could possibly be done either serverside or with JavaScript. Don't know about any premade scripts that does it though.

Impossible to do with HTML/CSS, at least - unless you manually add all numbers into your headings.

Upvotes: 0

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